Democrats Nail Down Planks In Party Platform

Campaign 2004

July 11, 2004|By Mark Silva, Sentinel Political Editor

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Talking tough on terrorism, hopeful for a better economy and mindful of the middle class, the Democratic Party embraced its 2004 platform here Saturday, making an "ironclad" commitment to civil rights for gays and other Americans.

Over the objections of anti-war Democrats, the platform also promises to finish the American military's mission in Iraq.

"Almost half of this year's party platform addresses national security," said Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman. Terming this "a reflection of John Kerry's strength," McAuliffe calls the party and its presumptive presidential nominee "confident of winning the debate on who can keep America safe."

Indeed, the forceful, hawkish tone this document strikes in the war against terrorism could pass for a Republican Party coda in any other era. Calling for expansion of the American military, it is entitled: "Strong at Home, Respected in the World."

The Democratic platform even invokes Nancy Reagan, widow of the revered Republican president who succumbed to Alzheimer's disease, in its support for the embryonic stem-cell research she is promoting. President Bush has strictly limited this research.

Yet, in its economic appeal to concerns of moderate, swing voters who could determine the 2004 presidential election, Republicans see a ruse in the platform that the Democratic Party will ratify at its nominating convention in Boston starting July 26.

Republicans say their rivals' platform masks some of the votes the party's nominee has cast in the Senate, where Kerry opposed the president's tax cuts as an overall package -- including child tax credits that are part of the party's new platform.

"What we are seeing here are the beginnings of what we expect in Boston -- what we call an extreme makeover," said Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, whose party will adopt a platform at its New York convention in late August. "The image they are trying to portray is a more moderate or centrist image than [Kerry's] policies stand for."

While appealing to the political center, this broad political umbrella still covers core Democratic commitments, such as gay rights. It opposes a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage that Bush is pushing.

With this, the Democrats have staked out the battle lines of a cultural conflict between the parties. Bush used his national radio address Saturday to criticize judges in Massachusetts, Kerry's home state, for permitting same-sex marriages.

"When judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution -- the only law a court cannot overturn," Bush said. "To defend marriage, our nation has no other choice."

Both the 35-page platform and the manner in which it was crafted -- starting in Oregon in May and concluding Saturday at a tightly scripted session on a Florida beachfront, in the biggest battleground of the 2004 election -- lacked the divisiveness that has marked this party in the past.

The platform bears the clear stamp of the party's standard-bearer, embodying many of Kerry's specific proposals. This includes repeal of Bush's tax cuts for people earning $200,000 or more a year, to pay for expanded health care.

More than 100 members of a 186-member platform committee endorsed a document closely controlled by several leaders of Kerry's own campaign, who corralled more than 200 proposed amendments into one "managers' amendment" in late Friday-night negotiations that were approved with scant debate here Saturday.

The war on terrorism consumes this avowedly "consensus document," which accuses Bush of abandoning a century-old commitment to waging war with world alliances.

While calling for modernization and expansion of the military, it stresses diplomacy and intelligence-gathering as the strongest tools in the arsenal.

It proposes 40,000 additional troops for active duty worldwide, and a doubling of special forces, to ease the burden the war has placed on the National Guard and Reserves. The Guard's primary mission, the party says, should be homeland security. And the military, it says, must remain a volunteer force.

It proposes to cut off funding of terrorists and speaks of keeping weapons of mass destruction from terrorist hands and averting such a fight. But should one occur, the Democrats say, "We will respond with overwhelming and devastating force."

"People of good will will disagree about whether America should have gone to war" in Iraq, the platform states. "Having gone to war," the platform states, mirroring Kerry's stance, "we cannot afford to fail at peace."

Party leaders have fended off anti-war Democrats seeking a pullout of troops.